How the U.S. Navy Is Helping in Search for MH370

A U.S. Navy helicopter took off Sunday from the USS Pinckney in the Gulf of Thailand to assist in the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.

Reuters

As the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet continues, the U.S. military says it’s using everything from the naked eye to advanced radar technology more often needed in antisubmarine missions to try to locate the Boeing passenger jet.

A spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet—which has ships, helicopters and one surveillance plane taking part in the search—said it was homing in on two areas: a 120-by-120 square-nautical-mile area in the northern part of Malacca Strait and a 100-by-100 square nautical mile area in the Gulf of Thailand.

The spokesman said the search so far was limited to the surface of the water, which he said had an average depth of 148 feet, and a maximum of 260 feet, in the areas where the U.S. Navy was searching.

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The Seventh Fleet has two destroyers participating in searches, the USS Kidd and USS Pinckney, plus an oiler, the USNS John Ericsson, to provide fuel and supplies. It says search areas for the missing jet are being assigned by the Malaysian government.

The USS Kidd, which carries two helicopters, is conducting helicopter searches in the southwest section of the Gulf of Thailand search area, while the USS Pinckney is conducting searches in the northeast portion of the search area, according to the Seventh Fleet.

Among the U.S. aircraft taking part in the search, the Navy says its HM-60R helicopter can search 400- to 600-square-miles area during a 3.5-hour sortie. Crews in its P-3C Orion surveillance aircraft cover 1,000 to 1,500 square miles each hour.

The Seventh Fleet spokesman said that its P-3 could use what is known as its magnetic anomaly detector to search for debris from the missing jet. The detector, located on the aircraft’s distinctive extended tail, is one instrument the navy uses in detecting other countries’ submarines.

Some parts of the search are more basic. While helicopters are equipped with infrared radiation imaging technology, the Navy spokesman said human spotters played a primary role in the helicopters’ search.

The U.S. is one among several countries that have sent their military to search for airliner, which has been missing since Saturday. More than half of its 227 passengers were Chinese.

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